Imre Bartis > Imre's Quotes

“A house is not a home until it has a dog.”
― Gerald Durrell

“The more time you spend thinking about yourself, the more suffering you will experience.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“We create most of our suffering, so it should be logical that we also have the ability to create more joy. It simply depends on the attitudes, the perspectives, and the reactions we bring to situations and to our relationships with other people. When it comes to personal happiness there is a lot that we as individuals can do.” •”
― Dalai Lama XIV, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“When you are grateful,' Brother Steindl-Rast explained, 'you are not fearful, and when you are not fearful, you are not violent. When you are grateful, you act out of a sense of enough and not out of a sense of scarcity, and you are willing to share. If you are grateful, you are enjoying the differences between people and respectful to all people. The grateful world is a world of joyful people. Grateful people are joyful people. A grateful world is a happy world.”
― Douglas Carlton Abrams, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“The Dead Sea in the Middle East receives fresh water, but it has no outlet, so it doesn't pass the water out. It receives beautiful water from the rivers, and the water goes dank. I mean, it just goes bad. And that's why it is the Dead Sea. It receives and does not give. In the end generosity is the best way of becoming more, more, and more joyful.”
― Desmond Tutu, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“the three factors that seem to have the greatest influence on increasing our happiness are our ability to reframe our situation more positively, our ability to experience gratitude, and our choice to be kind and generous.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“If you are setting out to be joyful you are not going to end up being joyful. You’re going to find yourself turned in on yourself. It’s like a flower. You open, you blossom, really because of other people. And I think some suffering, maybe even intense suffering, is a necessary ingredient for life, certainly for developing compassion.”
― Desmond Tutu, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“Discovering more joy does not, save us from the inevitability of hardship and heartbreak. In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will laugh more easily too. Perhaps we are just more alive. Yet as we discover more joy, we can face suffering in a way that ennobles rather than embitters. We have hardship without becoming hard. We have heartbreaks without being broken.”
― Desmond Tutu

“There are going to be frustrations in life. The question is not: How do I escape? It is: How can I use this as something positive?”
― Dalai Lama XIV, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“What the Dalai Lama and I are offering,” the Archbishop added, “is a way of handling your worries: thinking about others. You can think about others who are in a similar situation or perhaps even in a worse situation, but who have survived, even thrived. It does help quite a lot to see yourself as part of a greater whole.” Once again, the path of joy was connection and the path of sorrow was separation. When we see others as separate, they become a threat. When we see others as part of us, as connected, as interdependent, then there is no challenge we cannot face—together.”
― Desmond Tutu, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“Much depends on your attitude. If you are filled with negative judgment and anger, then you will feel separate from other people. You will feel lonely. But if you have an open heart and are filled with trust and friendship, even if you are physically alone, even living a hermit’s life, you will never feel lonely.”
― Desmond Tutu, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. I felt fear more times than I can remember, but I hid it behind a mask of boldness. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear”
― Dalai Lama XIV, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“Marriages, even the best ones—perhaps especially the best ones—are an ongoing process of spoken and unspoken forgiveness. •”
― Dalai Lama XIV, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“You show your humanity by how you see yourself not as apart from others but from your connection to others.”
― Desmond Tutu, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“We are fragile creatures, and it is from this weakness, not despite it, that we discover the possibility of true joy.”
― Desmond Tutu, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“You must not hate those who do wrong or harmful things; but with compassion, you must do what you can to stop them — for they are harming themselves, as well as those who suffer from their actions.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“It probably takes many years of monastic practice to equal the spiritual growth generated by one sleepless night with a sick child.”
― Douglas Abrams, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“As the Dalai Lama put it, “In fact, taking care of others, helping others, ultimately is the way to discover your own joy and to have a happy life.” The”
― Dalai Lama, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“We are wired to be caring for the other and generous to one another. We shrivel when we are not able to interact. I mean that is part of the reason why solitary confinement is such a horrendous punishment. We depend on the other in order for us to be fully who we are. (...) The concept of Ubuntu says: A person is a person through other persons.”
― Desmond Tutu, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“If you live with fear and consider yourself as something special then automatically, emotionally, you are distanced from others. You then create the basis for feelings of alienation from others and loneliness. So, I never consider, even when giving a talk to a large crowd, that I am something special, I am 'His Holiness the Dalai Lama' . . . I always emphasize that when I meet people, we are all the same human beings. A thousand people -- same human being. Ten thousand or a hundred thousand -- same human being -- mentally, emotionally, and physically. Then, you see, no barrier. Then my mind remains completely calm and relaxed. If too much emphasis on myself, and I start to think I'm something special, then more anxiety, more nervousness.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“And then the Archbishop offered his final and most effective remedy: reframing. “The very best is being able to ask yourself, ‘Why do I want to have a house that has seven rooms when there are only two or three of us? Why do I want to have it?’ And you can turn it on its head and look at how we are in such a mess with climate change because of our galloping consumption, which for the environment has been nothing less than disastrous. So you buy the small electric car instead, and you say, no I don’t need or want that big luxury car. So instead of it being your enemy, now it’s your ally.” Jinpa”
― Dalai Lama, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“I say to people that I’m not an optimist, because that, in a sense, is something that depends on feelings more than the actual reality. We feel optimistic, or we feel pessimistic. Now, hope is different in that it is based not on the ephemerality of feelings but on the firm ground of conviction. I believe with a steadfast faith that there can never be a situation that is utterly, totally hopeless. Hope is deeper and very, very close to unshakable. It’s in the pit of your tummy. It’s not in your head. It’s all here,” he said, pointing to his abdomen. “Despair”
― Dalai Lama, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“Adversity, illness, and death are real and inevitable. We chose whether to add to these unavoidable facts of life with the suffering that we create in our own minds and hearts... the chosen suffering. The more we make a different choice, to heal our own suffering, the more we can turn to others and help to address their suffering with the laughter-filled, tear-stained eyes of the heart. And the more we turn away from our self-regard to wipe the tears from the eyes of another, the more- incredibly- we are able to hear, to heal, and to transcend our own suffering. This is the true secret to joy.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“I’ve sometimes joked and said God doesn’t know very much math, because when you give to others, it should be that you are subtracting from yourself. But in this incredible kind of way—I’ve certainly found that to be the case so many times—you gave and it then seems like in fact you are making space for more to be given to you. “And”
― Dalai Lama, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“Forgiving is not forgetting; its actually remembering--remembering and not using your right to hit back. Its a second chance for a new beginning. And the remembering part is particularly important. Especially if you dont want to repeat what happened.”
― Desmond Tutu

“Differences are not intended to separate, to alienate. We are different precisely in order to realize our need of one another.”
― desmond tutu

“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”
― Desmond Tutu

“When we see others as the enemy, we risk becoming what we hate. When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves. All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others.”
― Desmond Tutu

“We were made to enjoy music, to enjoy beautiful sunsets, to enjoy looking at the billows of the sea and to be thrilled with a rose that is bedecked with dew… Human beings are actually created for the transcendent, for the sublime, for the beautiful, for the truthful... and all of us are given the task of trying to make this world a little more hospitable to these beautiful things.”
― Desmond Tutu

“A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.”
― Desmond Tutu